


Chilled to the bone

by knightinpinkunderwear



Series: Autumn OTP Challenge: Foxma [14]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But He Gets Better, Declarations Of Love, Fake Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Sad and Happy, Tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 00:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16629818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightinpinkunderwear/pseuds/knightinpinkunderwear
Summary: Lucius gets called to help with a body. One with a familiar face.(DONT WORRY NO ONE ACTUALLY DIES)Day 14 Autumn OTP Challenge: Cold Morning





	Chilled to the bone

**Author's Note:**

> In this AU Ed never worked at the GCPD, Lucius does, and Ed is a personal cook for some rich schmuck.

 

It was a cold morning. Lucius was sent out to a crime scene at 8:29. The junior tech needed help getting a body in the van. 

Lucius wished he hadn't gone. 

The body...

He couldn't look away, move, anything. 

His mind was just repeating moments from earlier that day. Moments he now felt that he wasted. Moments he wouldn't get to repeat again tomorrow. 

It was Edward. His fiance of 13 months now, frozen in both terror and ice. 

Wide eye behind cracked lenses and layers and layers of frozen water. 

He couldn't stand to see it. But he couldn't look away. The image burned into the back of his eyelids. 

It was _wrong._

He let the tears fall, trying to bite back most of them, and he helped the junior tech secure his frozen beloved into the back of the van. 

He wasn't needed to bring Edward's...body into the precinct. At least they had now thrown a blanket over him, so Lucius didn't have to see.

But he still saw, every time he blinked, the horror and wrongness of it. Everywhere he looked he saw the absence of him. 

Even if Edward had never worked here. Even though Lucius had rarely seen Edward in this building. 

All he could feel was that absence, that wrongness. He followed the body from a distance, waiting around the corner until the people moving _him_ left, he made the final turn, pushing the door open. The blanket was gone. The cart was next to a single autopsy table, the ice laid in a way so that if  _he_ weren't in it he'd be lying down. 

It was there, looking down at him that it really hit Lucius. And then the tears really came.

A hand clasped over his mouth to muffle a sob, another on his head, fingers digging into his scalp. 

The world was cruel.

He'd only had Edward for a few wonderful years, only lived with the man for two, only been engaged for one. 

He hadn't even got to _marry_   _him_. 

And that was just it. He _wasn't_ going to marry him. He wasn't going to live with him, to love him. 

Edward was... he was not _there_ anymore. There was no more future for him. It wasn't fair. It wasn't. Edward didn't have any reason to be dead. There was no good reason for him to be _gone._  

"Lucius! What's going on?" Commissioner Essen called from the door. He moved, going to sit at the desk. "Lucius?" she asked. 

"That's my fiance," he vaguely gestured to the ice, the cart, ...the _corpse._ "That's _my fiance,"_ he repeated, feeling it all crash down again. Like being repeatedly forced underwater by waves that just crash harder every time you try to swim up. 

Then his shoulders are shaking, his throat burns and constricts, and all is wrong with the world. It's so cold. 

And it crashed down again; he would never get to see him again, hear him incoherently mumble in his sleep, never see his smile again. 

And that was too much. Too much to lose all at once. 

And more than anything, it was proof, Lucius didn't deserve that man, he didn't deserve his smile, his laugh, his love. 

Commissioner Essen approached, with eyes that seemed too understanding, and much too old. She didn't say anything, but the hand on his shoulder was enough.

 

* * *

 

 

After about a half an hour in the room with...the corpse, Lucius moved to his office, stubbornly not letting Ms.Essen send him home. 

He couldn't go home just yet, he wasn't ready. He wasn't ready for it to feel empty, for it to feel cold. He knew it would. 

So he sat at his desk, pushing the paperwork away when it became all to clear that his mind would only focus on one subject. 

Edward was gone. And the world already felt cold without him. It felt like time was false like nothing ought to work in the same way it worked before. Not with  _him_ gone. 

He could remember everything about Edward, all the moments from this morning. Their domestic bliss, all except the feeling. He couldn't remember the simple adoration or contentedness, all he knew was the absence of it. How hollow and _awful_ it felt. 

He wished it was a nightmare, he just wanted to wake up, for none of it to have happened. He wanted to disappear, to cease to exist, it hurt too much. He couldn't imagine ever being happy again. 

He wished he'd had a day more with Edward. Or even an hour. Even a minute, just something more. Just some time to cherish  _him._ Just some time to commit everything to memory. Just some time to say goodbye. 

But he couldn't. And that was _so_ cruel. 

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually, he had to go back into the morgue, take the blood he was supposed to run tests on. 

The ice was melted, the cart still there. Edward wasn't on the cart. Or on the table. He was in the corner and-

Lucius dropped everything and ran. Before he knew it he had wrapped his arms about the body and was sobbing, holding the poor shivering and wet man as close to himself as possible. 

"You're alive! I love you! God! You're _alive! Thank you!_  " Edward was clinging to him, frostbitten fingers digging into his back. They were both shaking, overwrought with relief. Edward was cold and wet but the world felt so much warmer now. Lucius didn't think he had the will to ever stop smiling. 

Twenty minutes later Edward was sitting at the desk, wearing spare GCPD clothes and shivering under a shock blanket. Lee had brought a hot cup of horrid coffee (but the taste didn't matter, Edward needed warmth). 

Ms.Essen sent them both home quick;y and threatened to suspend him if he came back before the next week. 

 

* * *

 

 

At home, he helped Edward to fleece pajamas and a sweater before tucking him into a thick quilt and bringing him all manner or hot soups and tea. The morning had been cold, chilled Edward to the bone (literally) but now it was warm, cozy. Thawing the scare and sorrow from earlier. It would be warmer. 

"You aren't going to scare me like that again,"

"I don't intend to," Edward mumbled back, throat sore from the cold. 

"Good, because I will not tolerate you dying on me until we have been married for at least twenty years!" Edward laughed, and a little more warmth leaking into the world.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry, but at least I always planned this to have a happy ending.


End file.
